Girl with add vs adhd archive#

“The diagnostic criteria were developed based on those studies. “These studies were based on really hyperactive young white boys who were taken to clinics,” Littman says. She attributes the under-diagnosis of girls and women-it is estimated that there are about 4 million who are not diagnosed, or half to three-quarters of all women with ADHD-and the misunderstandings that have ensued about the disorder as it manifests in females, to the early clinical studies of ADHD in the 1970s. Ellen Littman, the author of Understanding Girls with ADHD, has studied high-IQ adults and adolescents with the disorder for more than 25 years. I would be taking Concerta, a relative of Ritalin. The answer to all of those questions was no. “So are you going to take Adderall and become super skinny?” “Are you going to sell it?” “Are you going to snort it?” “It’s difficult for girls to be diagnosed unless they behave like hyperactive boys.” You’re smart,” a friend told me, definitively, before switching to the far more compelling topic: medication. My peers were also confused, and rather certain my psychiatrist was misguided. As a fairly driven adult female who found the strength to sit through biology lectures and avoid major academic or social failures, I too was initially perplexed by my diagnosis.

The idea that young adults, particularly women, actually have ADHD routinely evokes skepticism. While the New York Times’ op-ed columnist Roger Cohen may claim that Adderall and other “smart” drugs “have become to college what steroids are to baseball,” these drugs have given me, a relatively unambitious young adult who does not need to cram for tests or club until 6 a.m., a more normal, settled life. Yet also harmful are the consequences of ADHD untreated, an all-too-common story for women like me, who not only develop symptoms later in life but also have symptoms-disorganization and forgetfulness, for instance-that look different than those typically expressed in males. The consequences of misuse and abuse of these drugs are dangerous-sometimes fatal.

And rising diagnoses mean rising treatments-drugs like Adderall and Ritalin are more accessible than ever, whether prescribed by a physician or purchased in a library. The New York Times recently reported, with great alarm, the findings of a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study: 11 percent of school-age children have received an ADHD diagnosis, a 16 percent increase since 2007. In editorials and in waiting rooms, concerns of too-liberal diagnoses and over-medication dominate our discussions of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. I was surprised when my psychiatrist diagnosed me with ADHD two years ago, when I was a junior at Yale. The other day, after two weeks of fruitless searching, I found my keys in the refrigerator on top of the roasted-garlic hummus. When you live in total squalor-cookies in your pants drawer, pants in your cookies drawer, and nickels, dresses, old New Yorkers, and apple seeds in your bed-it’s hard to know where to look when you lose your keys.

Girl with add vs adhd archive#

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